Ontology of Folksonomy

Author: Thomas GruberTitle: Ontology of Folksonomy: A Mash-up of Apples and OrangesDate: November 2005Type: Invited keynote, the First on-Line conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR’05)

Citation: Thomas Gruber (2005). Folksonomy of Ontology: A Mash-up of Apples and Oranges. First on-Line conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR’05). Published in Int’l Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems, 3(2), 2007.

Context: Keynote “Presentation” at Virtual conference in which participants interact over asynchornous communication.

Abstract: Ontologies are enabling technology for the Semantic Web. They are a means for people to state what they mean by formal terms used in data that they might generate or consume. Folksonomies are an emergent phenomenon of the social web. They are created as people associate terms with content that they generate or consume. Recently the two ideas have been put into opposition, as if they were right and left poles of a political spectrum. This piece is an attempt to shed some cool light on the subject, and to preview some new work that applies the two ideas together to enable an Internet ecology for folksonomies.